BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING (BIM)

BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING (BIM)

In a freewheeling chat with Clear Estate, B. Seyed Ibrahim of BIM Global Solutions talks about how the global real estate industry is embracing BIM

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has completely transformed how buildings, infrastructure, and utilities are planned, designed, built and managed over the last few years.

BIM puts together a virtual construction of a facility even before its actual physical construction, thereby reducing uncertainty, improving safety and simulating and analysing potential problems.

It further strengthens the project by incorporating functional characteristics such as electrical connections, safety measures and water and sewage pipelines.

BIM elevates the traditional 2D construction design beyond 3D, supplementing the three primary spatial dimensions (width, height and depth) with time as the fourth and cost as the fifth dimension.

Clear Estate was keen to figure out where India stands globally in BIM adoption. And B. Seyed Ibrahim, Chief Executive Officer of BIM Global Solutions – a Chennai-based outfit, which executes BIM implementation and documentation through training key personnel across the country was whom we got in touch with.

“BIM has found widespread adoption in many developed economies, such as Europe, U.S., Australia and Singapore. In fact, BIM is implemented not only in commercial or large-scale projects, but also in smaller residential units.” says Mr. Ibrahim. Adding that “India is still a nascent market in BIM adoption.”

On the city-based BIM adoption graph in India, ”While cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore like to make a statement by embracing newer technologies and processes, Chennai falls short.”

But there is a start, “Phoenix MarketCity, Velachery, is one of the latest big projects to have implemented the solution. But it (BIM) is not getting much traction among residential developers constructing G+4 or G+5 apartments.”

Generally, anything new faces resistance, states Mr. Ibrahim, adding that construction is a highly fragmented industry, in which engineers, architects and contractors like to adopt different solutions.

“We are in talks with several developers in the country… As it is a developer-driven market, most don’t want it, fearing it might add to the cost. The ground reality, however, is BIM implementation constitutes only a negligible part – much less than 5 per cent – of the overall cost of the project. In addition, it will ensure 20-40 per cent savings on the total budget.”

As for the other benefits of BIM implementation, even factors like occupancy and traffic can be analysed for any project. “When I started off as an architect, there were no computers, but only drafting boards. From there, we has come a long way. I strongly believe that BIM will find more adoption in near future,” concludes Mr. Ibrahim.